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NLA News - home May 2001 Volume XI Number 8

Portrait of Maybanke Susannah Anderson (1845-1927)
Reproduced from the Lone Hand, 2 February 1914, p. 205
Pictorial Collection

 

Portrait of Maybanke Susannah Anderson (1845-1927) Maybanke Anderson - Feminist, Suffragist and Federationist
Maybanke Anderson was buried in an unknown grave somewhere near Paris in 1927.  It is surprising that the grave of the wife of Francis Anderson, former Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney, should be unrecorded. Perhaps it is more surprising that the name 'Maybanke Anderson' is so little recognised among Australians today.

It has been said that the stories we tell each other define who we are, both as societies and as individuals. The stories in the Federation narrative largely concern those men who made the political moves necessary to bring off the Federation coup. Although Queen Victoria ruled the Empire, women rarely held public office, nor did they vote. The Australian exceptions were South Australia where women gained the vote in 1894, and Western Australia, which followed in 1899.

Maybanke Susannah Anderson, also known as Maybanke Wolstenholme, was one of a group of forward-thinking, reformist Sydney women who, along with like-minded men, worked to achieve women’s suffrage in New South Wales. In the 1890s Maybanke Anderson saw Federation as an opportunity to extend suffrage to all Australian women.

Maybanke Anderson, born Maybanke Selfe at Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, 16 February 1845, was the daughter of Henry Selfe, a plumber and inventor, and Elizabeth Selfe. Her distinctive first name was the surname of her paternal great-great-grandfather, Dr Samuel Maybanke.

In 1855, the peak year of migration, the Selfe family paid its own way to Australia on board one of the 'Family Colonization Loan' ships organised by Caroline Chisholm, known as the immigrant’s friend for her welfare work among newcomers. Maybanke was nine when the family arrived in Sydney and settled in the unruly Rocks-Miller’s Point area.

Twelve years later disaster struck on two fronts. In September 1867 she married a 24-year-old bachelor, Edmund Kay Wolstenholme, a timber merchant from West Maitland and, just before Christmas, her father Henry drowned trying to cross the flooded Nepean River.

To call Maybanke’s marriage a 'disaster' anticipates its outcome. Probably she was happy in the early years of her marriage. Her first child Harry was born in West Maitland, June 1868. Her seventh and last child was born in 1879. Sadly, she was to see four of her children, including her three daughters, die before the age of five, all from pulmonary related diseases. Years later she expressed the lingering sorrow at their childhood deaths in a poem:

And they alone and memory are all
that’s left below
To tell of all I loved and lost so many
years ago.

In the early 1880s the Wolstenholmes built 'Maybanke', a large home in spacious grounds at Frazer Street, Marrickville. However, Edmund’s business failures and increasing alcoholism meant that Maybanke became the breadwinner for the family. She managed to survive financially with help from her brother Norman Selfe, an engineer.

Cover showing advertisement for Maybanke College Reproduced from the Women’s Voice, vol. 1, no. 1, Thursday, 1 August, 1894

Cover showing advertisement for Maybanke College
Reproduced from the Women’s Voice, vol. 1, no. 1,
Thursday, 1 August, 1894
(Sydney: Jas A. Ross, 1894)

 

Legally the Wolstenholme marriage lasted 26 years. Although Edmund left the family in 1884, Maybanke had to wait until the passage of the Divorce Amendment and Extension Act in 1892 to sue for divorce on the ground of desertion. Her divorce was finalised in1893.

After Edmund’s departure, Maybanke took boarders into her Frazer Street home and in 1885 she established a girls' school there- Maybanke School, later known as Maybanke College. Over the following ten years her school gained a reputation for its progressive teaching methods and its success in preparing students for Sydney University entrance examinations. The Wolstenholme home is now part of the Salvation Army’s Maybanke Senior Citizens Centre, Dulwich Hill.

There is little doubt that Maybanke’s divorce and personal tragedies aroused her compassion for the sufferings of women and children as well as a determination to fight for their rights. There seems to be a 'crossing-over' between her personal story and her public work.

While not denigrating the family, she speaks up for the single mother. In the first Workers' Educational Association (WEA) pamphlet (1915-1916), Maybanke writes:

there is no reason at all why the child of a single woman should not be as well cared for and as well trained as the child of a deserted wife, and it is probable that the child of a single woman in a single home will enjoy more happiness and plenty than it would do if it were obliged to share the home of a gambler or a drunkard. 

A copy of Maybanke’s pamphlet, The Root of the Matter: Social and Economic Aspects of the Sex Problem, is in the National Library’s collection.

In her excellent biography, Maybanke Anderson-Sex, Suffrage and Social Reform (1993), author Jan Roberts remarks that Maybanke’s divorce was 'a catalyst, a turning point from private to public life'.

Maybanke believed the vote was 'the kernel for all reform'. With this principle in mind she threw herself wholeheartedly into the struggle for women’s suffrage. As vice-president of the Women’s Literary Society (WLS) she gently pushed for discussion of women’s suffrage. One of her efforts brought a rebuff.  A typescript in the National Library’s Manuscript Collection dated 1924 and titled 'Woman’s Suffrage in Australia' tells the story. She'd raised the issue of women’s suffrage at a meeting of the WLS and 'suggested that we consider the matter'. Her record continues: 'Silence followed my suggestion and after this one member rose and said "I hope that we shall never touch this abominable question".' Maybanke comments: 'There were no doubt some women present who did not agree with this member, but no one raised her voice, and the business ended.'  She might well have added 'for the time being'.

The Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales (WSL) was formed on 6 May 1891. Lady Windeyer (wife of W.C. Windeyer, born Mary Bolton) was elected president. Mrs Wolstenholme is listed as one of the vice-presidents, the other being Hon. W.H. Suttor MLC. Miss R. Scott (Rose) and Mrs G. Montefiore were honorary secretaries. Indeed the WSL’s office bearers and council reads like the roll call of Sydney’s first wave feminists and a Who’s Who of Sydney intellectuals.

Maybanke Wolstenholme, along with her lifelong friend Rose Scott, Louisa Lawson and others, was an inaugural speaker at the WSL’s first public meeting. The meeting, chaired by Professor MacCallum, took place at the Economic Association Chambers in Pitt Street. Later WSL met in the King Street Tea Rooms made available by wealthy Chinese philanthropist Quong Tart.

Maybanke’s views on women’s suffrage have a self-evident clarity. In the Woman’s Suffrage Journal, 15 June 1891 she states:

It can no more be right or expedient for one half of our population to make laws for the other half than it would be right for the people north of the 34th parallel to legislate for those south of it.

Jan Roberts points out that a distinctive feature of the New South Wales suffrage movement 'was the quality of support the women were given by leading men in the colony'. The husbands of Matilda Curnow and Lucinda Gullett, founders of the WLS-Maybanke’s launching pad for discussion of suffrage issues-were the editors of the Herald and the Daily Telegraph respectively. Roberts notes both editors 'gave space regularly to publicise such WSL activities as public debates, meetings, and deputations'. The Bulletin on the other hand, lampooned the women suffragists.

By 1893 there was some dissension within the WSL. Mary Windeyer resigned as president in September 1893, over constitutional issues. Louisa Lawson also left the movement at this time. At the following elections Maybanke Wolstenholme was elected president.

Maybanke Anderson’s former house

Maybanke Anderson’s former house, corner of Frazer Street and Wardell Road, Dulwich Hill, Sydney, January 2001
Photograph courtesy of Ann Nugent

 

The year 1893 had been a particularly busy one for Maybanke. She was the working principal of Maybanke College. Yet in this year she also founded the Australasian Home Reading Union, a scheme to promote education by establishing small study circles in rural areas. She was on the Council of the Teachers' Association of New South Wales and was a contributor to its journal, the Australian Teacher.

The following year Maybanke started her own women’s newspaper, the Woman’s Voice, issued fortnightly. The masthead of the paper proclaimed its editor’s philosophy: 'democratic but not revolutionary; womanly but not weak; fearless without effrontery; liberal without licence.' The National Library holds a set of Woman’s Voice. It is a quality publication.

Maybanke’s editorials, 'From the Casement', were forthright and feminist. In her first editorial she wrote: 'so long as women are allowed to give the nation their money in taxes ... and are not allowed to do the simple duty of casting a vote ... so long as women must bear children to die in hundreds in their infancy... there will be teaching work for thinking women and the need for a woman’s paper.'

In fact the Voice ran for 18 months. Maybanke’s newspaper gave extensive coverage to suffrage issues both nationally and internationally and brought to public notice the desperate conditions of women closer to home. For example, on 8 September 1894 the Voice reported that admittances to Sydney’s only Female Refuge for the previous month were a shameful '1169 women and 691 children.'

The plight of children of working mothers, many of whom were forced to leave their children locked in houses or roaming in the streets, moved Maybanke to establish the first free kindergarten at Woolloomooloo in 1895. Her involvement in the free kindergarten movement continued until the 1920s.

In 1895, death once again struck Maybanke’s family. Her 23-year-old son Arthur was drowned when the Catterthun struck Seal Rocks off the northern coast of New South Wales. Arthur was 4th engineer on the ship. It was a double loss for the family as Arthur had been engaged to Maude Fox, who lived in Maybanke’s household.

Despite the unrelenting efforts of the New South Wales suffragists during Maybanke’s WSL presidency (1893 to 1897), the women of New South Wales did not obtain the vote before the end of the century. Electoral bills were introduced in the lower house only to have clauses deleted, to be crowded out, to lapse or be rejected by the upper house. Politicians made promises outside the Parliament and then let them slide on the shifting sands of parliamentary alliances.

Nevertheless in 1897, Maybanke and WSL members had reason to hope that suffrage would soon be achieved. Their tactic, devised by Maybanke, was to petition the 1897 Federal Convention in Adelaide to have the women’s vote written into the Federal agenda. Thus the women of those colonies who had the vote could not have the right to vote taken from them by Federal legislation. There was also a general expectation that with uniform franchise at the Federal level there be would a 'flow on' at State level. At this time Maybanke became very involved in the pro-Federation campaign, founding the albeit short-lived Women’s Federal League. In fact women’s suffrage was achieved on a colony-by-colony basis. Women in Victoria had to wait until 1908 for voting rights at the State level.

Maybanke resigned as president of the WSL in 1897, probably thinking her goals had been achieved. Unfortunately, suffrage did not come in New South Wales as smoothly as expected. It was not until Premier George Reid was defeated in 1899 that the pro-Federationists gained ground. In January 1901 Australia’s first Prime Minister Edmund Barton stated that the franchise should be uniform 'to avoid confusion' and, in 1902, the New South Wales Parliament extended the franchise to include women.

In 1899, 15 years after the separation from her first husband, Maybanke married for the second time. She was 54 and her husband, Francis Anderson, first Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney, was 40. They enjoyed nearly 30 years active life together, travelling, working for their causes and building their homes and gardens.

The National Library holds several of Maybanke’s published works, including her 1902 Australian Songs for Australian Children, and a new imprint of Maybanke’s story of Pittwater, edited by Jan Roberts. The Mitchell Library acquired Maybanke’s papers in 1985.

On her third trip overseas Maybanke died after an operation near Paris in 1927. How can a person of such influence slip so easily from the national story?

Biographer Jan Roberts suggests that Maybanke’s 'self-effacing spirit may have contributed to her subsequent omission from the lists of Australian women’s suffrage leaders as well as from most Australian histories.' I suggest that a type of offhand carelessness allows us to treat our history and its artefacts as disposable items. And so we lose what we do not value.

After her death Maybanke’s associates erected a sundial and seat in her memory, designed by her friend Sir John Sulman. Roberts locates the memorial as being 'at Waverley College, overlooking the sea'. After writing this article I visited Maybanke’s memorial-only to find it had been removed and replaced by a flagpole.

Looking back it is possible to see the finger of Maybanke Anderson in the work of those post-suffrage feminists who campaigned for financial independence and property rights for women well into the 1950s. Although the post-suffrage feminists hardly featured in the parliamentary arena, and in this they failed the hopes of their feminist foremothers, they succeeded in creating a 'maternalist' welfare state with wide ranging services for mothers and children and which provided a degree of financial autonomy for non-Aboriginal women through maternity benefits and child endowment payments.

It is a little harder to see Maybanke in the new wave of feminism that swept Australian universities and public life in the 1960s. What would she have made of Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch, or of Merle Thornton and Ro Bogner chaining themselves to the bar of the Regatta Hotel in Brisbane in 1965? I can't see her in the front-line of the 1960s protest movement-in 1913 she wrote 'I decidedly disapprove of militancy'-but I can see her a couple of rows back, pen in hand, patiently and persistently restating her rational, timeless humanist argument that a woman has rights:  'for the very same reason that a man wants the vote, because she was essentially one of the people'.

Ann Nugent is a Canberra-based freelance writer


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